Take the Good Leap
by bootsontheground
Summary: Response to a lilacmermaid prompt: Elizabeth is the one who proposed to Henry.


_**Madam Secretary Prompt: Elizabeth is the one who proposed to Henry.**_

I know nothing about the ROTC terminology and the way cadets speak or what the people who do the things are called. So, my apologies for the things I shall inevitably screw up.

**WARNING: not a trigger but a mentally mature realization ahead that I am warning all minors from. This is a realization you must come to on your own, if has not already been thrust upon you. I do not wish to be the one to trigger that realization, because I am not sure this is the softest way to approach this. To each his own decisions; good luck in yours. - boots. **

...

"_-it is the moment I learn every person I ever come to know will some day die" (Sabrina Banaim)._

They weren't supposed to end like this. In fact, they weren't supposed to actually end.

For the first time since that sunny June day, the possibility of someone she remotely cared for leaving her, hadn't automatically crossed her mind. Which was odd, because ever since they went for milkshakes- every teacher, every possible friend, roommate, person on the bus, character in a show she was beginning to like too much- every single person she met she found herself considering what would happen if they died. Like a twisted safety mechanism.

Perhaps this was because she hadn't been prepared when they had died. She hadn't reached that mental milestone of realization that one day your parents will die. One day they won't exist. When your upset, your mother won't be there to cuddle with. Your father won't hug you tightly. They will not speak some word of wisdom and some ridiculous joke back to back. They will not speak it all. They will not touch your cheek. They will not deal out injustice as wisdom and have you grow to the realization of their error. They will not be there. They will not be there. Elizabeth had not had time to brace herself for that one. So she had tried to brace herself for others.

Henry had still been a surprise. She had forgotten to imagine him gone. It hadn't automatically occurred to her. And now he was gone. No reason. No discussion. No random act of God. Nothing but himself, having looked at her with sad eyes and left their apartment for his friends.

_What an asshole._

_Don't call Henry that._

Elizabeth leaned forward to lightly tap her head against the door. He had walked out half an hour ago, and she hadn't moved. Her hand was still sweating against the doorknob. What was her precious, dorky idiot's problem?! Here she had been under the impression that they were a serious committed thing…

_Okay, you have a choice now: break down in tears and wallow in your torn love and live a terrible life of disappointment and what ifs and 'scars from a previous relationship' and 'commitment issues'-_

_Or?_

_Or do something about our idiot._

But what was to be done? He didn't want her. He didn't need her. He was going to be gone in a few weeks, and this was too much for him. She was a burden.

_"You're never too much, Elizabeth. Just seeing you makes me relaxed. Yes, even when you're here to complain."_

Henry wasn't a liar. So, he didn't see her as a burden. Then what?

_"I can't! I can't be your Henry, Elizabeth! I belong to the United States now. I am going to be gone. I am going to leave for months and years and I won't be with you. I won't know where I am going to be, going to do, going to anything! We are too young for this… whatever this is. We have our own lives to get to. This will get in the way. You have dreams. We are too young to be dependent on each other."_

They weren't too young though. They were 21 and 25 respectively. Plenty of idiots got married that age and made it. And they were in love; they had motivation to make it.

It was all so sudden too. One minute Henry was making the bed and the next he was stuffing a duffel bag with his drawer and toothbrush, saying he would be back for the rest but that he had to go. That they needed to break up. One minute, she was ogling his fine butt bent over the bed, him getting precedingly frustrated at the bed sheets, and the next minute he was running his hand furiously through his hair while perched in the doorway, desperately trying to explain his stupid reasoning, head bowed and refusing to meet her gaze.

Whatever it was, Elizabeth knew she wasn't going to let this go. Before, she had laid back and taken it all. Every move to every increasingly irritating and stifling boarding school, she had taken lying down. Every time Will asked her for a bail out, she let him dip a finger into her pocket and take it. Every time a professor didn't think she was good enough, she took it lying down. Henry was the one who, with his nice and gentle personality and genuine kindness, had shown her that you didn't have to be mean to stand up for yourself. That it was your right as a human being, to stand by what you thought and believed. It was time to show him what she had learned.

Elizabeth wanted to be in a relationship with Henry McCord. She wanted to be with him. To be attached to him via an invisible rope, strong as a billion towing trucks. And Elizabeth Adams was not going to just let him decide all of this. She was going to take a risk, and potentially embarrass herself. But, Elizabeth patted a steady hand on her chest, it would be worth it.

It was time to visit her closet and then the mall. She was ready to stand up for herself and her future.

…

Henry was sitting on a small stool by a bright orange, empty water cooler in the middle of the quad. In front of him was a bright red man shouting so quietly that if Elizabeth didn't know better, she would think he was miming as an angry red guy from every single sports movie ever. Walking closer to them, eyes on the back of Henry's sweat stained shirt, she could hear a low deep voice shouting reprimands in a husky growl.

"Once you've got your head in the game, you can head to the barracks and clean everyone's formalwear. Until then, sit here and sweat your patheticness into the cooler!"

Henry dutifully leaned over the cooler, staring into it like a bottomless pit.

He looked tired, eyes darting from the bottom of the cooler to the rest of the cadets marching in place and sweating in the heat of early May. Henry then glanced down, shifting his feet in the grass. He was wearing his church shoes.

Elizabeth could feel every muscle in her face and body loosen slightly at the sight of Henry's pristine and polished men's size 11 dress shoes caked in mud, down to the laces. Henry only went to church on weekdays when he was in need of comfort. If he wasn't feeling like absolute crap, heavy with guilt, he would have borne the pain and kept going. But he hadn't. He wasn't sure if this was the right decision. He was confused; her dorky idiot was confused.

_God bless._

"Elizabeth?" He had finally looked up at her. His eyes were wide and unblinking, hands coming up to straighten his shirt and then lifting up in front of him to explain.

Elizabeth put up her own hand. "Wait. I talk. Your talking broke us up, so I go now."

Henry nodded. "Fair."

"You said that we're too young and that this is too much. You said you aren't going to be able to be there for me, because of your deployment, and that you are sorry that you dated me in the first place."

Henry flinched.

"I'm sorry too, Henry. I liked us-" Now or never. "I loved us... I love us... I love you."

Henry locked eyes with Elizabeth. Those eyes had told him that they weren't ready at each milestone and step of their relationship. Those eyes had made him pause, and wait, and appreciate everything they did, even before each step was taken. Those eyes taught him that love was available and ready without the constant fighting and bitterness and one-way compromise. That the good parts didn't have to be few and in-between. That every day didn't have to be a chore. That habit could feel good. That Elizabeth was someone he loved. Why hadn't they ever said it out loud before?

"I love you too."

_Do it. Like in the movies._

Elizabeth pulled out the smooth, velvety box from her back pocket. She let the weight of his words ease through her, and she dropped on one knee.

"Yesterday, you called me to come pick you up when your car broke. You were sitting inside of it and I pulled up. I unlocked the door and you got in. And you smiled at me, really wide like you always do, but brief, very quick. And then you went to shifting the air vents to you and warming yourself up. I remember feeling comfortable with that smile. I was thinking about my paper and I was a little focused on that, and I didn't feel the need to strike up a conversation with you or put some music on to fill the void. You said something about getting a friend's dad to tow it tomorrow. And then you rested your hand on the gear shift like you do and I didn't think, I automatically rested mine on yours and let our fingers tangle."

Elizabeth opened the box, raising it up to Henry. "I want you there, for the rest of my life. I want to spend a thousand comfortable silences with you. I want to worry over things, make important decisions, fight over small things. I want to be exhausted, to wake up with you, to fall asleep with you beside me, to drive with you there. I want to exist with you, to feel you tangling your fingers with mine, even when you aren't actually there. I knew when I met you that you would be going off to deployment one day. And every day it is worth it. It makes you driven and purposeful and it is a decision you made, I know with great worry and care. Let me be there, Henry. Don't do this alone. You don't have to. I want to be yours and for you to be mine. No matter how far we are, or how busy we shall soon be, I would like it if you somehow always came back to me. I want to be yours, Henry, for however long you will allow."

Henry's eyes lifted from the shining band nestled in red velvet. Soft eyes memorizing every inch of the woman kneeling in front of him.

"Marry me?"

And for a moment it was as if there was too much air to breathe, and not enough lungs for him to swallow all that air and expel it in one go. She looked beautiful and she was beautiful and he wanted this.

"Yes. Please yes."

…

Short, but I was desperate for Elizabeth on one knee asking Henry to marry her. I was just desperate.


End file.
